The Battle of the Cowshed & Snowball's Leadership
Snowball’s Character and Leadership
Snowball is presented as the intellectual, idealistic pig who genuinely tries to improve life for all animals. He organises committees to teach the animals to read, plans improvements to the farm, and studies military strategy from a book about Julius Caesar’s campaigns. He represents Leon Trotsky — the brilliant but ultimately outmanoeuvred rival to Stalin.
Orwell presents Snowball as “quicker in speech and more inventive” than Napoleon, but “not considered to have the same depth of character.” This contrast is crucial: Napoleon is less intelligent but more ruthless — and in the power struggle, ruthlessness wins.
Snowball’s committees include an Egg Production Committee, a Clean Tails League, and literacy classes. While most fail, they show genuine effort to include all animals in the revolution’s benefits. His motto is “Four legs good, two legs bad” — a simplification of Animalism designed for the less intelligent animals, especially the sheep.
The Battle of the Cowshed (Chapter 4)
In October, Jones and a group of men from neighbouring farms attempt to retake Animal Farm. Snowball has anticipated this and prepared a defensive strategy. He leads the animals bravely, charging directly at Jones and receiving a wound from his shotgun. The animals win a decisive victory, and Snowball is hailed as a hero.
Snowball organises a two-phase strategy: a feigned retreat to lure the men into the yard, followed by an ambush out of the cowshed that cuts off their retreat. This shows his tactical intelligence — he has studied military history and applies it effectively.
Snowball is awarded “Animal Hero, First Class” for his bravery. A decoration that Napoleon will later claim for himself.
Boxer also fights heroically, knocking a stable boy unconscious with his hoof. He is distressed, thinking he has killed the boy — showing his gentle nature despite his enormous strength.
The battle allegorically represents the Russian Civil War (1918–1922), when the Bolsheviks fought off counter-revolutionary forces supported by foreign powers.
Napoleon vs. Snowball — The Growing Rivalry
From the start, Napoleon and Snowball disagree on almost everything. Snowball wants to spread the revolution to other farms; Napoleon focuses on consolidating power at home. Snowball draws up plans for a windmill that would bring electricity and reduce the animals’ workload to three days a week. Napoleon opposes the windmill — or rather, he opposes Snowball having the credit for it.
The windmill debate represents the historical conflict between Trotsky (who advocated for rapid industrialisation and spreading revolution internationally) and Stalin (who promoted “socialism in one country” and consolidated domestic power). Napoleon’s rejection of the windmill mirrors Stalin’s initial opposition to Trotsky’s policies — though he later adopts them as his own.
After Snowball’s expulsion (which happens in the next chapter), Squealer gradually rewrites the history of the Battle of the Cowshed. He claims that Snowball was actually a coward and a traitor who fought alongside Jones. Napoleon, Squealer claims, was the true hero of the battle — despite having been barely mentioned during it.
This historical revisionism mirrors Stalin’s treatment of Trotsky: after exiling him in 1929, Stalin had Trotsky airbrushed out of photographs and rewritten out of Soviet history books. Orwell shows that controlling the past is essential to controlling the present.
The animals gradually accept the new version of events because they cannot remember the details clearly, and Squealer’s confident delivery makes them doubt their own memories. Orwell suggests that without records and literacy, truth becomes whatever the powerful say it is.